


Sinew

by captain_iodine (orphan_account)



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Brotherhood of Steel - Freeform, Far Harbor, Gen, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-08-09 07:36:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7792582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/captain_iodine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It has been over 200 years since the plague decimated the world; the infected became mindless, savage beasts, killing at will and infecting the survivors with their bite. </p><p>Over time, the virus has evolved — has become smarter, better, stronger. Those infected live normal lives, transforming under the full moon to give into their bloodlust, waking up with no knowledge of what they've done. </p><p>Even now, as society has tried haltingly to put itself back together, the plague destroys lives and tears families apart. </p><p>An ascetic order of hunters may be humanity's only hope. They call themselves the Brotherhood of Steel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Will update the tags as more characters appear.

It's midnight; the moon follows her path in the inky black sky, illuminating the trees far below — the trees, which rustle in the wind; which shake with the movement of something very much alive. 

A set of eyes glint somewhere amid the undergrowth, big and bright, pupils mere slivers of black. 

The eyes are watching something, some _one_. Two someones, in fact: a woman and a man. Just below the eyes a nose, damp and rough, sniffs the air and catches the scent of blood on it. The man — he's wounded. 

A female voice drifts across the breeze, high and sweet. Singsong, almost. Two ears prick up to listen. 

‘You're an ass, Rhys,’ the woman says. Scolding, but affectionate. ‘Next time you're bleeding, tell me _before_ it becomes a problem.’

When the man chimes in, his voice is less soothing — gruff and impatient, everything the woman's wasn't.

‘I already told you, I'm _fine_. If I told you before you would've held us up fretting over me like a mother hen.’

His words are punctuated with a sharp, indignant cry; the woman lashing out, smacking him sharply on the arm. 

‘Like I said,’ she replies, cooler now. ‘You're an ass.’

The eyes track the pair as they make their way along the path, the nose taking over whenever they disappear from sight. The nose doesn't like the way they smell… Oil, and something else, something sickly.

They walk for a long time, bickering at first until the man seems to weaken. Then they barely talk at all, except whenever she checks in to see that he's doing okay. When they stop after a while, the nose can smell the blood more strongly now, the tongue can almost taste it; saliva flows freely, and four legs tense up, ready to pounce—

A beam of light cuts through the night, turning slitted pupils to pinpricks. A growl rumbles low, fear and confusion and warning all at once. 

The light turns towards the sound and flashes across dark gray fur, barely catching a glimpse as a creature bounds away on all fours, disappearing into the darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags updated.

It's early November and bitterly cold; the mists rolled in a few days ago and haven't budged since.

The only souls brave or foolish enough to linger outside are the ones whose livelihoods depend on it: the anglers, knee-deep in the undertow that could sweep them away at any moment. Callie watches them from the safety and warmth of The Last Plank; the window she watches through fogs up again and she wipes at it once more, dampening the edge of her sleeve in the process. 

The weather isn't just miserable, though. Things hide in the fog — sinister, dangerous things that snatch up hapless wanderers. Folks get snatched up in broad daylight, too, but when the fog rolls in it's all the more perilous. 

She blows out a breath. The worst thing about the fog? The monotony. In a little town like Far Harbor, you run out of things to do pretty quickly. 

Debby swings by for the millionth time that morning and Callie orders another coffee, out of boredom more than anything else. Once the waitress is gone she resumes idly staring out the window; the angler she had been watching now holds up a fish, large and impressive even to the untrained eye. 

The door swings open with a creak and Callie doesn't bother to look up. Probably one of a handful of faces she has seen a thousand times already. 

‘Jesus Christ, guys,’ Mitch says, and it doesn't sound like the usual exasperation over a broken glass or a disorderly patron. 

Callie looks up and finds herself staring at an unlikely trio — a woman with a set of goggles sitting atop her red hair, a man who is visibly injured, and what can only be described as a giant, walking suit of metal armor.

‘You gotta be kidding me,’ Mitch exclaims. He slips around the bar and scurries over to the trio, shoos them out with a desperate waving of his hands. ‘You come in here, tracking dirt and blood and whatever else in? What, Teddy Wright won't patch you up any more?’

The response from the wounded man is quieter, less audible. Callie can't make out the words but she can pick the tone up well enough. Something about a drink, and a stream of curses; a moment later the woman at his side is helping him across the room and into one of the booths. 

Callie doesn't even bother to hide the fact that she's watching, the window and the angler long forgotten. She sees the woman take her hand away from the man's side, sees blood on her palm. He doesn't seem too bothered by it, although he winces somewhat as he tries to straighten up in his seat. 

‘Tell me you didn't get bit,’ Mitch hisses; it's low enough that Callie knows it's not meant for anybody else's ears, but she's close enough that she can hear it. 

She might not know who these strangers are, but she knows what it means if any of them have been bitten. 

‘No, I didn't get _bit_ ,’ the man replies. ‘Now bring me my goddamn whiskey.’

Across the room Debby ducks behind the bar and pulls out a bottle. Callie has the sinking feeling she won't be getting her refill any time soon. 

Her neck prickles. She feels like she's being watched; when she looks up she finds the suit of metal armor is now short one helmet, revealing the man within. Her first instinct is to look away in response to being watched, but his dark brown eyes are arresting — they won't quite let her go. 

He crosses the room and the floorboards shake a little along the way with the thud of his giant metal legs. His gaze slips past her to the window, then moves to his companions. 

He says something to Mitch, low and apologetic, and the barkeep sighs and walks away, shaking his head as he goes. 

‘I'm not sure you should be getting drunk when you're bleeding so badly,’ the man in the armor says, calm and measured.

Callie tries to shift in her seat to get another look at his face but from this angle, his dark hair hangs loose and falls into his eyes. Instead, she watches a stray raindrop cut a path through the condensation on his armor, trickling down the strange symbol printed in red on the arm of it. 

She knows she hasn't seen him around before — any of them, even. The gigantic armor, the weird get-ups the other two are wearing? She'd remember.

‘I'm not trying to get drunk,’ the bleeding man says. ‘Just let me get something to take the edge off and you can drag me straight to the doctor.’

‘Rhys,’ the woman says. She doesn't quite sound irritated — more like this is a routine they've all done before. 

The woman places a hand on Rhys’s shoulder and he rolls it off; she withdraws it and folds her arm across her chest without missing a beat.

Debby brings the sought-after whiskey and sets it down in front of him. He knocks it back like it's water and flicks a glance up at her, and she fills the glass again. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Callie wonders absently if it's a little early to be hitting the hard liquor, but then she can't remember the last time she had a hole in her side. She's not exactly in a position to judge. 

It's only after the third glass that Rhys waves Debby off and tries to get to his feet, reluctantly giving in to help from the others at his side when his legs seem to fail him. 

As soon as they arrived, they're gone, leaving empty glasses and mud footprints in their wake.

On the edge of the table there's a remnant of the shape of a hand, printed there in blood; Debby seems to notice at the same time Callie does and whips out the cloth from her back pocket, scrubbing at the stain. 

Callie hears the woman mutter to herself as she works, a smattering of complaints and salty language. 

‘Who were they?’ Callie asks. 

She's never seen them around, but evidently they're well known. Debby shoots her a withering glance. 

‘Those three _heroes_ strolled into town a couple months back,’ she says. Her voice all but drips disgust. ‘Called themselves the Brotherhood of Steel.’

_Brotherhood of Steel? What kind of a name is that?_

‘Sounds… Important,’ Callie replies, a little bemused. 

‘Oh, didn't you hear?’

Debby stops her task and straightens up. From where Callie sits, it doesn't look like she made a dent in the blood. 

‘After they first showed up on the boat, they left on some mission,’ Debby says, rolling her eyes. ‘Said they're gonna rid the island of our little wolf problem, once and for all.’


	3. Chapter 3

There’s a leak in the roof; it makes its presence known with the steady _drip, drip_ of water that bubbles on the plaster overhead before spilling free, hitting the floorboards below. Callie knows she should get somebody to look at it, but it’s always too wet and precarious to send anybody out onto the roof when there’s a fog about; by the time the weather dries up, she forgets it’s there.

The leak seems to have gotten worse when she returns home later in the morning after her first brush with the Brotherhood of Steel; the pool on the floor is certainly larger, and when she glances up she finds the tide marks have spread, staining the ceiling an ugly brown.

She sighs. Adds it to the ever-growing list. Maybe she can persuade Allen to have a look at it for her.

The rest of the house is small but neatly-kept, apart from the occasional niggle outside of her control. It doesn’t always have running water, and sometimes the wind blows the door in even when it’s locked, but it’s home.

Well. As close to home as she’s going to get.

She throws her keys down in their usual spot on the bookshelf beside the door and shrugs out of her rain-spackled jacket, hanging it on the hook to the right of the entryway. The nail holding it in place sags precariously under the weight. Something else to get looked at.

Another sigh, and she wonders why the hell she’s still here — this house, the Harbor, fucking _Maine_. She sure as shit doesn’t wake up in the morning excited to see what new adventures the island will bring because there aren’t any, unless you like them cold and damp.

She thumps the sofa, threadbare and oft-patched, with the toe of her boot. An offended meow sounds out and the cat appears from within the cushions only to sprint away, stopping at the doorway into the hall to lick at its paw.

Callie finds the spot where the cat was sitting, a warm impression in the moss-green fabric, and sinks into it.

Home, sweet fucking home.

 

* * *

 

He’s waiting for her when she gets to the schoolhouse.

Head ducked low against the drizzle, intent on her destination, she doesn’t really see him at first; he’s a big, broad silhouette, a scant impression of a man in a knitted cap and a buttondown shirt, but then she realizes she _knows_ that cap, just like she knows the furrowed brow hidden just underneath the hem of it.

She shoots him a look, but he’s scowling when their eyes meet.

What’s new?

She leans on the wall beside him and ignores the damp feeling that ebbs through her clothes and into her skin. When he slips a battered box of cigarettes out of his pocket, he hands one to her without asking.

‘You look like shit,’ he says, as he lights her cigarette for her.

She doesn’t dignify it with a response; she had a cat nap before coming here and woke up cramped on the sofa with her hair matted and her cheek wet with drool. She could blame him for keeping her up late last night. _Could_ , but doesn’t.

‘You heard anything about those weirdos in The Last Plank?’ she asks, avoiding the subject. ‘Brothers-in-Something?’

A beat.

‘Brotherhood of Steel?’

‘Sure.’

He shrugs, and she feels the warmth of him through her sleeve as his arm bumps against her.

‘Some fanatical band of hunters from the mainland,’ he answers, pausing to light his own cigarette. He shifts a little, making room to get the flip lighter back into the pocket of his jeans. ‘They showed up at the end of the summer, I guess. Disappeared a little while after that. Why? They back in town?’

Callie nods, to which he replies with a curse and a shake of his head.

‘What’s so bad about them?’ she asks.

He turns and scowls at her for a moment and she knows he’s going to give her the usual anti-mainlander spiel — they can’t be trusted, Far Harbor’s gotta look after its own, et cetera et cetera. Just as he’s opening his mouth, a child runs past them from inside the school. Whatever it is can wait.

She drops her cigarette and stubs it out quickly, ducking into the building. Whether or not Allen decides to wait for her, she knows he’ll never step inside.

The Harbor’s schoolhouse is just that — a ramshackle abode with living arrangements upstairs and a classroom on the first floor where the sitting room should be. There’s a kitchen in back, although the door is almost always closed; on the only occasion she has seen it open, the table was littered with empty bottles. She’s not one to judge.

Kids file past her — some almost as tall is she is, soon old enough to assist in teaching the younger children, if they choose to continue their own education — and then she spots a familiar pink backpack, grubby but still bright. She waits until the other children pass and then hooks her finger into the loop at the top of that backpack as its owner hurries by.

‘Whoa there, kiddo,’ she says, tugging at the loop of fabric.

The girl attached to it stops and turns, and in the brief moment while her guard is down Callie sees irritation, then recognition, before the girl’s face settles into moody indifference.

‘Mom,’ she protests, shrugging free of Callie’s grasp. ‘I _told_ you I could walk home alone.’

Eve turns twelve soon; Callie wonders sometimes if she was so precocious at that age.

‘The fog’s coming in’ Callie says, in a don’t-argue-with-me tone — or at least her best approximation of one. There are times when she’s not entirely sure who’s boss. ‘You know I don’t want you wandering around while the weather’s bad.’

Eve sighs and there’s a hint of a pout, but she doesn’t push it any further.

They leave together, Eve a little ahead like she’s embarrassed to be seen with her mother. She spots Allen as she steps out into the drizzle and barely spares him a glance.

Callie takes up an easy pace with Allen as they follow Eve, watching her march ahead with the confidence of a kid yet to hit the awkward teenage years. For her daughter’s sake she keeps a little distance from Allen; she knows Eve doesn’t like the guy.

‘Anyway,’ she says. ‘You were gonna tell me what’s got everybody so worked up about the Brotherhood.’

‘Are you sure you wanna be having this conversation right now?’

Callie looks at Allen, but he’s staring ahead at Eve. They might not get on so well, the two of them, but she can see where he’s coming from; when he’s not complaining about the kid, he tries his best to look out for her. Wolves are dirty business — not a topic for children’s ears.

That’s never stopped Eve from listening in when she’s not supposed to, of course.

Callie waves her hand for him to continue.

‘You remember a few months back, when a couple folks wound up getting killed on a hunt?’

She remembers; she remembers their names, too, even if Allen won’t say them: Keith and Emma.

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I remember. Avery had the town on lockdown after that. Were the Brotherhood involved?’

‘Yes and no,’ Allen says, and although she rolls her eyes she knows he’s not trying to be mysterious. ‘They weren’t there, but they sure as shit had something to do with it.’

She frowns. She had figured they were trouble when they stormed into The Last Plank, one of them all but leaking blood, but she hadn’t heard anything about them before then; surely she would have if they were involved in the deaths of two of the townspeople.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘They’re bad news,’ he says. ‘Ever since they came into town, attacks have been on the up. Wherever they go they bring problems with them.’

She can’t help the sigh of exasperation that crosses her lips. She should be used to this by now — the constant suspicion about outsiders. There was a time when he was like that about her, too.

‘So you’re just being paranoid?’

It’s meant as playful teasing, but when he stops and turns to her, furious, she knows it didn’t come across that way.

‘Damnit, Callie,’ he snaps. He puts out a hand and, as though forgetting himself, grabs her by the arm. ‘Am I paranoid for wanting to keep the town safe?’

There’s something else there, an implication. _For wanting to keep you and Eve safe,_ she can almost hear him say. She looks down at his hand on her arm rather than meet his eye, and as if he’s only just become aware of it he lets his hand drop. Her skin feels colder now, without the contact.

‘All I’m saying,’ he says, more calmly now, ‘is we’ve been getting by just fine here without mainlanders interfering. I’d like it to stay like that.’

They’re silent the rest of the way to her home; Eve ran ahead, so the door is unlocked when they get there and a telltale trail of damp footprints starts at a discarded pair of sneakers and crosses over to the refrigerator, then out into the hallway. The kid rarely sticks around for long when Allen’s over.

‘It’s not like we couldn’t use the help,’ she says, slipping out of her wet outer layers for the second time that day. ‘Deb said they’re not mercs, so they’re not looking to make a quick buck. It sounds like maybe they want to make a difference.’

When he stares back at her, impassive, she knows there’s no point in arguing. His mind is already made up.

‘You hungry?’ she asks.

He comes out with a gruff ‘No’ when she’s halfway to the refrigerator, so she opens the door and scours its contents for a moment. There’s foil-covered leftovers in a dish, probably from weeks earlier, and all the raw ingredients she could possible want to whip up some complicated, healthy dish — which she’s not about to do if she’s the only one eating.

While she’s dithering over whether or not to risk the leftovers, she spots the assorted bottles of beer in the bottom and elects to stoop low to grab a couple; as she’s leaning down she feels Allen come up behind her, his hands on her hips as he presses himself against her ass. It’s not entirely unexpected, although she still fumbles with the necks of the bottles as she picks them up.

He gives her barely any room to straighten up; pressed this close, she can feel everything.

‘Allen, not now,’ she murmurs. Not entirely annoyed, but not in the mood. ‘Eve’s home…’

She expects him to protest, but he doesn’t. He drops his hands and backs up, giving her the space she needs to turn around. When she looks up at him, it’s hard to tell if the sullen expression on his face is because of her rejection or if that’s just how he usually looks.

‘Later,’ she says, pressing one of the beer bottles to his chest.

He covers her hand with his own when he moves to take hold of the bottle; his hands are cold, but the contact isn’t unpleasant.

She almost takes it back, almost turns for the doorway to lead him to the bedroom, but she counts the seconds out and soon his hand is gone from hers, the bottle having been slipped from her grasp. He gives a little half-quirk of his lips, the closest thing she’ll probably ever get to a smile.

She turns to the drawer to grab the bottle opener — but then she hears the thud as he uses the edge of the countertop to knock the bottle cap off, and can’t help but wince.

‘C’mon, Al.’

She twists to look back at him and scowls, and that not-quite-smile of his is still there, maybe more so now. She can never quite tell under all that beard but she thinks maybe he knows exactly what he’s doing, knows how much it bugs her.

‘Sorry,’ he says. He definitely doesn’t sound sincere, but his next words do: ‘I’ll make it up to you.’

There’s something there that sounds like a promise; maybe if they had what conventional people might call a relationship, he’d buy her dinner. They both know that’s not what he means.

She’s okay with that.

They share their beers perched against the kitchenette countertop, conversation sparse but comfortable. He used to intimidate her — she never knew the right thing to say, and when most of her comments were met with nonplussed silence she figured she’d said the _wrong_ thing. With time, she came to appreciate his particular brand of caustic brevity.

At least with Allen, she knows where she stands — knows what he wants from her, what she wants from him. After everything she and Eve have been through, it’s about all she can ask for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate Allen. He's a massive jerk, and in the game he's pretty irredeemable. However I love torturing my characters, and I feel like he's exactly Callie's kind of bad news.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s a little after three in the morning. She can’t sleep.

She splashes water onto her face and lets the rivulets run down her neck, darkening the gray of her nightshirt where it soaks into the material. It’s still ungodly out, but the humidity is up. Sometimes it feels like she can’t quite catch her breath.

She crosses the hallway back to her bedroom as silently as she can, careful as she passes Eve’s door.

Allen is dead to the world, one arm slung across his face to shield against the glare of the lamp on her side of the bed. She could wake him now and press him to leave — probably _should_ — but there’s a selfishness in her that wants him to stay. She knows he’ll be gone by the time she wakes, once she inevitably falls asleep, but at least for now he’s here.

Her side of the mattress is cold when she climbs back into bed and she savors it, her skin prickling against the chill of the sheets. 

When she flips the switch on the lamp, she’s left with the light of the moon, casting everything in blue.

Dreams come eventually, fitfully. The bed's too uncomfortable, Allen too warm beside her. The dreamscape blurs into reality and back again, and she’s never quite sure what’s fabricated and what isn’t.

Weaving its way through it all is a sound: the thunder of heavy-booted footsteps, or the drone of a grandfather clock. Repetitive, deafening. It dogs her even as she finds her way back to wakefulness, and in the haze between worlds she can’t quite seem to place it.

Allen is still beside her; the moon’s glow still bathing the room. She can’t have slept for very long.

The sound persists, and her addled brain begins to make sense of it — it’s a banging sound, not quite so rhythmic as she first thought. Erratic, perhaps. And it’s coming from inside the house.

She’s wide awake.

She finds her button-up in a heap at the end of the bed and slips into it, making a mess of the fastenings as she moves to leave, her fingers trembling with adrenaline. She knows she’s letting it get the better of her — ghosts and monsters are only real in the dead of night — but no amount of rationalizing can calm her down.

She should probably wake Allen up; she thinks this even as she opens the door and slips outside, shutting it carefully so that he won’t stir.

Even in the darkness, her feet find their path down the hallway. The sound gets louder as she nears the living room: more forceful now. She’s already at the entryway when she wishes she had woken Allen after all, but now it’s too late. She’s here.

It’s blustery out, and the swaying trees outside cast tortuous shadows on the hardwood floor. The sound of the wind is strong in here, too, and she realizes with a dizzying lurch of relief that the banging noise is coming from the door. It must have blown open in the wind. Nothing new there.

She sighs. Of course.

The floor is cool beneath her feet as she makes her way across the room, dodging the leak in the ceiling as she goes by. She pulls her button-up a little tighter around herself to guard against the cold, and as she closes the door there’s a little resistance there from the wind. She hopes it’ll hold this time; she’s not in the mood for another night-time waking.

She turns to go. Before she’s taken two steps she hears the door popping open again.

‘Gimme a break,’ she mutters, to nobody in particular.

The Harbor’s a small place; outside of the smattering of stores and eateries that make up the harbor proper, the town consists of a handful of houses on the outermost edges. The houses that aren’t empty — the empty ones are either uninhabitable from age, or vacant due to unpleasant circumstances — are occupied by families that Callie knows well, even being relatively new to town. In short: she knows nobody will see the door open and come in. That doesn’t mean she’s okay with leaving it hanging open all night.

Back to face the offending door again, she tries for a second time to close it. She really pushes it this time, shoving her shoulder into it and listening for the telltale _click_ of the latch, which never comes.

It’s only then that she thinks to check the lock; her side of it is fine, a little rusty perhaps, but when she opens the door and pokes her head around to the other side, the same can’t be said of the exterior.

The lock is dented, the handle itself gone — wherever it is now, she can’t see it.

With a frown etched into her forehead, she steps barefoot onto the cracked concrete outside and glances around. Kids, maybe — although she can’t think of anyone offhand who would do such a thing.

She waits outside for a long while, trying and failing to tune out the howl of the wind as it whips her hair about her, hoping to catch the sound of someone nearby. Even in the light of the moon she can’t see for shit — the houses are built up around here; plenty of hiding spots.

Maybe it was nothing — the wind hurling something into the door in an unlikely wrong-place, wrong-time scenario.

Maybe.

She shakes her head, at herself and at the wind, and pivots on her feet. There’s nothing she can do about it now, anyway; maybe she can push a chair-back under the handle on the inside to keep it shut for the time being.

She’s wondering how she can convince Allen to fix _this_ for her, too, when she spots them.

Claw marks. Across the door: slashing diagonally from top-left to bottom-right, marring clapboard and frame and door alike. She knows now what happened to the handle.

She’s running before she realizes it, shouldering through the door where it had swung partway shut and almost, _almost_ slipping in that godforsaken puddle on the floor, and her legs know where they’re taking her even if her mind hasn’t caught up yet.

The door to Eve’s bedroom — not closed, slightly ajar. No claw marks here, but then there wouldn’t be: she never keeps it locked.

Callie throws it open and in the warmth of Eve’s night light she can see the covers yanked aside, and the book she’s been reading for the dozenth time lies torn on the floor, pages exploded across the carpet.

The window’s open; even from where she stands, she can see the clump of fur snagged on the latch.

She’s at the bed tearing at the covers futilely when she hears a hysterical noise begin to well up from her throat, getting louder and louder until it's a banshee cry that she couldn't stop if she knew how. 

She doesn't know whether she feels the grip on her arms first or if her voice gives out before it; soon Allen is pulling her close to him, his arms enshrouding her.

She thinks he’s hushing her gently; maybe he’s asking what’s wrong. His words are incoherent to her: meaningless.

This is her fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY, CALLIE 
> 
> I'll make it up to you someday :(


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been sitting in my drafts I don't know how long. I actually forgot to post it. _Whoops._
> 
> Can I still blame baby-brain seven months later?

How many days has it been? It’s all one big blur, and she can’t remember the last time she slept.

Or — no, that’s wrong. She’s been sleepwalking all the while, her body going through the motions where her mind has forgotten how.

She’s not so far gone that she can’t see the way people look at her, can’t hear the whispers: _Did you know she had Allen Lee over when it happened? Kid got snatched out from right under her nose. Maybe if she…_

She doesn’t need to hear their words to know what comes next: maybe if she hadn’t been so selfish, maybe if she’d been more careful, maybe if she’d just been a better mother.

She knows, because she’s been saying the same to herself.

_I fucked up,_ and then, _I have to get her back._

It had been Allen who had held her tight until her world had stopped spinning, until she had calmed enough to string words together. She had told him about the claw marks, the fur. He had got that look, like he didn’t know what to do to help her, and she had realized she was sick of seeing it.

Nobody was going to help her any more; she had to do it herself.

He hadn’t let her go out that first night — got his hands on something from Teddy Wright that was potent enough to knock her out for a few hours. She had taken it, albeit reluctantly. When she woke up late into the next day the mind-fog had set in, but she had gone out anyway with a gun in her belt, searching for hours until it grew too dark to see past her nose.

The townspeople have been sending out search parties, of course, but she knows it’s more of a token gesture than anything else. The only people who survive a wolf attack are the ones who get bit and turn.

It’s early morning; the fog is lighter now, barely kissing the ground. She knows today’s the best weather she’s probably going to get to search and she gathers up her things, checking her gun to make sure it’s loaded before leaving.

The lock on the door is fixed, the handle replaced with something mismatched but pristine. She’s been coming and going for days without even noticing the handle was gone.

There’s a commotion in the middle of the harbor, not that she has much by way of attention to divert towards it; soon she becomes aware of her name being called, only it’s not her first name — it’s her surname, and it’s been so long since she’s heard it that she hardly recognizes it.

‘Ms. Blake? Ms. Blake!’

The voice gets closer, and she turns with a reprimand ready on her lips for whoever it is — maybe Avery, here to yell at her for missing her patrol shifts.

It’s not somebody she recognizes in the end, although the closer the figure looms the more familiar it seems. Red hair, neatly braided, and a pair of ridiculously oversized goggles.

‘Ms. Blake?’

She wants to chew this woman out for coming to her at a time like this, but when she meets the stranger’s eye she can’t quite bring herself to. She doesn’t find pity there, in the woman’s expression; she sees compassion, but not pity. It’s enough of a change from the townspeople that it gives her pause, allowing the woman a moment to catch up to her.

‘I’m so sorry to bother you,’ the woman says. ‘I heard about what happened. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.’

She seems to mean well, but Callie isn’t in the market for another round of condolences. She gives her a pointed stare; the woman seems to get the hint.

‘I won’t keep you for long. I don’t know if you’ve heard about us, but we’re with the Brotherhood of Steel. We take care of… Problems like yours.’

Great. A sales pitch.

Callie folds her arms across her chest. No, not interested, no unsolicited callers — thank you _very_ much.

‘I have somewhere to be,’ she says. ‘So unless this has a point…’

The woman’s expression hardens just slightly, although to her credit her tone doesn’t change. She probably came over expecting a little resistance, but not out and out hostility. Still, she doesn’t let it faze her.

‘We wanted to see if you might be willing to talk to us,’ the woman says. ‘We’re not looking for any sort of commitment — we just wanna help. Maybe you can tell us about what happened, and we can figure out if there’s anything we can do to help.’

She glances back over her shoulder; Callie follows her gaze to the source of the commotion at the harbor — the man from The Last Plank a few days earlier, still decked out in his ridiculous metal armor, seems to be having an argument with some of the townspeople.

The woman looks back, her expression meek as she chews on her bottom lip.

‘He’s a little busy right now,’ she says. ‘But if you’re interested, we’re set up just outside of town.’

She points off in some direction and, as a courtesy, Callie looks. She has no intention of taking these people up on their offer.

‘Thanks,’ she says. _But no thanks._

The woman nods and turns to go — with a jolt she stops and turns back around, a friendly smile on her face.

‘I’m Haylen, by the way. If we’re not at camp when you come looking, chances are we’re in town. Just ask around for me, or Danse or Rhys.’

Callie nods.

Haylen said _when_ , not _if_.

Haylen dashes away then, presumably to rescue the man in the armor. Callie watches for a moment as the other woman squeezes her way through the crowd, and her clear, unassuming voice cuts across the dwindling fog.

‘It’ll just be for a few more days,’ she’s saying. ‘We’d be more than happy to contribute to—’

Callie doesn’t stick around to hear the rest of it. She has no intention of taking Haylen up on her offer, but if they’re planning on sticking around town awhile this probably won’t be the last time she runs into the Brotherhood of Steel.

It’s just as well that she’s not going to be around for much longer.


	6. Chapter 6

Another day, another fruitless search. As Callie makes her way back home after nightfall, she feels the possibility of finding Eve start to slip further from her grasp.

Inevitably, the days will get shorter and the nights will stretch longer and longer. It’s not safe for her to be out after dark. She can’t bring herself to care; searching for Eve is the only thing getting her up in the morning.

It starts to rain as she makes her way back to civilization: a pathetic drizzle at first that soon grows heavier and leaks through the tree cover, drenching her to the bone. By the time Far Harbor is in view she’s cold and shivering, her long dark hair plastered flat to her head.

She needs a drink.

No, scratch that — she needs oblivion.

A quick trip to her house to change into something drier and wring out her hair, and then she heads for The Last Plank. She keeps her ten mil in her belt, safety on, out of habit.

The rain gave everybody the same idea, apparently; The Last Plank is full to bursting with townsfolk, to the point where she can’t get a seat. Doesn’t matter — you can get wasted just as well standing up.

She makes her way through the crush of bodies to the bar, the stench of rain-damp clothes thick in the air, and slaps some currency down on the countertop — a couple dollar coins, some bottlecaps and a handful of bullets. She has more where that came from; she might not eat so well for the next while, but she can’t remember the last meal she had that somebody didn’t practically force-feed her.

Mitch doesn’t look too happy to see her there. Not because he doesn’t like her — they’ve always got along just fine, even when she was new to town and took up a job helping Deb wait tables, which was a disaster. She supposes he doesn’t approve of her coming to drown her sorrows.

Too bad.

‘Just gimme whatever’s cheap and strong,’ she says. When he opens his mouth to protest, she promptly cuts him off: ‘I’m a big girl, Mitch. I don’t need you looking out for me.’

The last thing she needs is his grating voice all high-and-mighty-ing about how he knows her better than she does and yada yada yada.

She’s grateful when it never comes; he sets a glass and a bottle of cheap whiskey down on the counter, half full, and pushes her money back to her.

‘On the house,’ he says. ‘Just don’t come crying to me about your hangover in the morning.’

She thinks a look passes between them — understanding, maybe — and for a second there it’s the closest she’s felt to being human in days.

There’s barely any room where she’s standing, but there’s enough to move her elbows — that’s all she needs.

She fills her first glass and downs it in one gulp, regretting it almost immediately. The burn of the liquid has barely faded from her throat when she’s aware of somebody at her shoulder, a little too close. She ducks her head, in no mood for conversation, and pours herself another drink.

The man beside her takes his time placing his order, requesting a few brand names only to be told he’s out of luck. Callie finds herself curious; nobody at The Last Plank is this precious about what they order.

Surreptitiously, she glances up at him through the still-wet curtain of hair hanging into her face — and _up_ is accurate: she has to crane her neck more than usual to see his face.

Dark eyes; dark hair, rain-speckled but neatly parted. His beard is more like a healthy dose of stubble, thick enough to obscure his face but not enough to hide his jawline. A few days ago she might have paid attention to that jawline, and to the too-serious eyes, and it dawns on her slowly that she already _did_ pay attention to them, in this very same bar.

He’s hardly recognizable without the armor.

‘Just give him some Gwinnett, Mitch,’ she says, exasperated. She’s getting sick of their meandering back-and-forth.

She’s already glaring back down into the amber liquid in her glass, but she feels the man beside her shift to look down at her. She hopes he doesn’t say anything — God forbid he thank her and she be obliged to say something polite in return — and thanks her stars when he doesn’t. He just reaches out to claim the bottle Mitch sets down for him, paying for it quietly.

They drink silently side by side, and although they aren’t sharing a drink together it becomes unavoidably apparent that they’re sharing _something_ : personal space, for sure, but also something else. She realizes she crafted some sort of assumed intimacy between them when she went ahead and ordered for the guy, and while she bristles at the thought of it, she can’t help but be… What — relieved? Glad?

Allen hasn’t laid a hand on her since that night; not in the grown-ups-doing-grown-up-things sense, and not in the I’m-here-for-you-in-your-time-of-need sense either. He’s never been good with intimacy, with affection. Turns out she’s been so fragile the past few days that she hadn’t realized how long she’s gone without being _touched_.

Now she _definitely_ needs to not be sober.

Midway through her second glass, this one sipped more carefully, she feels the man move again, this time turning to face her. She knows it’s coming, but before she can do anything about it he’s talking to her.

‘Haylen said she came to you about our offer,’ he says. His voice seems deeper than she remembers. Burlier, though less authoritative now. ‘Have you considered it?’

‘Yup,’ she says. She considered it the moment it was put to her.

‘Do you think you’d be willing to talk to us?’

She turns to him then, a sigh on her lips, but when she gets a proper look at him for the first time — face to face, no curtain of hair in the way — she catches herself.

He’s older than she first thought; probably no more than a decade her senior, but the crinkles at the corners of his eyes are telling. His face is etched with a few small scars, and a larger one slashes through his right eyebrow. Of all the people who’ve claimed to be hunters, he’s the first one that she thinks she might just believe.

‘That depends,’ she says. ‘I’m not gonna be sticking around town much longer, so unless you can do something in the next couple days, I’m not so sure you can help.’

He frowns; with it, his whole face darkens. He seems terse, but his expression does a lot of the talking.

‘Where are you going?’

Now that’s a loaded question, with a loaded answer. Away: not so far that she can’t return should Eve somehow find her way back, but enough that she can maybe get some answers.

The reply she gives him is a little more concise: ‘Acadia.’

The frown lightens just slightly; one of his thick eyebrows pops up in curiosity.

‘The observatory?’

She nods. Takes a sip of her drink, then turns back to the bar. She doesn’t know why she’s telling him this; maybe because she doesn’t plan on seeing him again.

‘Just following up on a rumor,’ she says. Terse: she’s not looking for a chat, not with this guy, not with anybody.

They drink without exchanging any words, or more accurately _she_ does; he hasn’t budged from his spot, and he’s still staring down at her. She wonders if he’s still got that frown, or if his features have reassembled into some other telling expression.

It takes her a moment to realize his hand is on her arm. She sets her glass down on the bar, maybe a little too forcefully, and turns to glare at him.

‘What?’ she snaps. ‘What is it?’

He lets go; seems to realize he overstepped his bounds, and assumes a more martial demeanor. Hands clasped behind his back, chin up: the perfect soldier, reporting for duty.

‘If that rumor is what I think it is,’ he says, ‘then we may be able to help you after all.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it'll probably come as a surprise to nobody that my attention has been a little divided lately. It was a bit of a mistake rushing into Sinew when In the Shadow of the Bull was still going — both fics have very different narrative voices and it can get a little difficult to maintain both at the same time.
> 
> What that has resulted in is me not being able to write Sinew as well as I'd like to because ITSOTB is a behemoth, and not being able to focus on ITSOTB because it's always in the back of my mind that Sinew has been neglected.
> 
> I figure this chapter is as good of a note as any on which to say I'm gonna shelve Sinew for just a little while — not permanently, just long enough to finish In the Shadow of the Bull.
> 
> I repeat: I am not abandoning Sinew, just giving myself a bit of breathing space from it. That's not to say that I won't be working on it in the background, of course; I just wanted to take a little pressure off so that I could write ITSOTB undistracted.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. I'll be back soon :)


	7. Chapter 7

For a group with an intimidating name like the Brotherhood of Steel, Callie is almost disappointed to find them camped out in a series of mottled camo tents, lit up in oil lamps. She was expecting their impromptu base of operations to be something a little more impressive.

She recognizes the man sitting on a moss-blanketed rock as she approaches — he was the one bleeding all over The Last Plank days before. He must be Rhys. He barely looks up from his cigarette to greet her.

They find Haylen inside one of the tents, sitting cross-legged and hunched over something in her lap.

‘Haylen.’

Her head pops up and there’s a slight metallic _ping_ as whatever she was holding drops. When she turns to look back at them, Callie can see what looks like a first aid box in her lap, all but overflowing with supplies.

‘Danse,’ she says, by way of slightly harried greeting. Her eyes settle on Callie then, and her mouth makes a little O of surprise. ‘Ms. Blake.’

‘It’s just Callie.’

Haylen inclines her head.

‘I didn’t think you were going to come along after all,’ she says.

Callie shrugs.

‘Either did I.’

There’s a little scrambling as Haylen finishes up with whatever she was doing and snaps the first aid kit shut, setting it aside as she straightens up. She has to stoop a little where she stands under the center of the tent; Callie can only imagine what a tight squeeze it is for Danse, who towers above them both.

Haylen steps out of the opening, ducking around the support pole, and regards them with a smile.

‘So,’ she says. ‘What’s the plan?’

Danse shakes his head. He doesn’t seem to share Haylen’s sugar-rush eagerness to get on with things, although he did visibly brighten up when Callie agreed to come with him.

‘She’s just hearing us out for now,’ he says. ‘I thought maybe you two could go over the particulars.’

A nod, and Haylen is soon gesturing Callie inside.

‘Start at the beginning,’ she prompts. ‘Don’t leave anything out.’

* * *

Callie feels raw by the end of it; in spite of Haylen’s best intentions, she can’t seem to help interrupting in the middle of things to ask for more details, or to clarify something she’s uncertain about. Just when Callie doesn’t think she can put up with any more drilling about whether she’s _sure_ she didn’t spot anybody lurking around on the day Eve was taken, or whether she’s _positive_ she didn’t hear any voices that night, the interrogation lets up.

‘I don’t know if Danse told you why we’re here,’ Haylen says, absently jotting a few words into her notepad. ‘Your case is exactly the type we’re interested in. I know it probably doesn’t feel like it, but if anybody can help you, it’s us.’

Callie wrinkles her nose. It’s a nice thought, one that she would love to take comfort in, but she’s not so sure.

‘He said you’re tracking down a refuge,’ she replies. ‘Said you’d heard rumors there might be some wolves holed up in the observatory.’

Haylen nods.

‘We have no guarantee that it’s true — we’re working off of intel that’s months old at this point. But when we tried to scout the location, we were attacked.’

‘Wolves?’ Callie prompts.

‘M-hm. That makes it a little more likely that our intel is good.’

Callie neglects to mention that she has heard the rumor too; nothing concrete, but enough to warrant checking the place out for herself. She’s glad she didn’t head up there alone, if Haylen’s report of being attacked is to be believed.

‘So what’ll you do if it turns out the rumors are true?’

Haylen sighs; she clicks her pen distractedly, then seems to realize what she’s doing and swiftly sets the offending object aside.  
‘We won’t really know until we get there,’ she replies. ‘Could be the place is overrun and we won’t have a hope of getting inside. Could be we need to wait until we can get some more of our people in to assist.’

Callie wonders just how many make up the numbers of the Brotherhood of Steel. They don’t sound like some ragtag handful of fighters — from what she can tell, they’re disciplined. She’s never heard of them before, however, either on the island or back in Boston, so they can’t be that big of a deal.

‘Can I ask you something?’

Her voice catches a little as she says it. This is the hard part — the moment where she says aloud what she’s been mulling over in her head for days now. Haylen doesn’t seem to notice, although she waves for her to continue.

‘Do you think,’ she begins, trailing off to clear the lump from her throat. ‘Do you think Eve is...’

When words fail her, she sees Haylen’s eyes grow wide. The woman reaches out and places two gentle but sturdy hands on her shoulders, and her face comes in close.

‘Ms. Blake,’ she says. ‘ _Callie._ Have you ever heard of a wolf _taking_ someone from their bed? This isn’t the first attack that happened in somebody’s home, but there was no blood — nothing to suggest she was hurt.’

Callie swallows again.

‘So what then?’ she retorts. She can feel her backside going numb from sitting so long, but she doesn’t move. ‘Why take her?’

‘I don’t know,’ Haylen admits. ‘We’ve been trying to figure that out. We even entertained the possibility that your daughter turned and fled, but that doesn’t match up with your account of the hair on the window and the door lock being broken from the outside.’

It flows through Callie — a trickle at first, then a torrent: hope. For the first time since embarking on her fruitless searches, she feels like maybe she has a chance at finding Eve. At the very least, it does make sense that she’s alive, given what Haylen has said.

The numbness is too much; she tilts to the side and pushes herself up, taking a few baby steps toward the opening of the tent to stretch out her limbs.

She’s cold, uncomfortable, and the rain seems like it’s here to stay again — and yet this is the most heartened she’s been in days. She thinks of Allen, probably swinging by her house right now to see that the lights are out, and wonders how much it would annoy him to know that she’s here talking to the Brotherhood. She still doesn’t understand why he’s got such a grudge against them, even beyond the usual distrust for mainlanders.

Whatever. He can complain about it all he wants when she sees him again; that won’t dissuade her from going.

Huh.

She supposes that’s her mind made up.

‘We were planning on sticking around town to help with the nightly patrols,’ Haylen says, getting to her feet behind her. ‘If you want a little time to decide what you wanna do, we’ll be here.’

‘No.’

Callie turns; even in the dim illumination of the lamp between them she can see the disappointment written on Haylen’s face. She probably thinks Callie’s going to shoot down the offer here and now.

‘I wanna be a part of this,’ Callie says. Firm and sure, more so than she feels. ‘If there _is_ a refuge, they must know something.’

_And I’ll gut them all to find her, if I have to._ She leaves that part unsaid.

Haylen looks at her thoughtfully. Callie gets the feeling she’s being sized up — measured and quantified, weighed and judged all in a single look. She doesn’t know what Haylen is trying to figure out, or if she’ll be found lacking, but she meets Haylen’s studying glance with one of grim determination.

Subtly, almost invisibly, Haylen nods.

‘You any good with a gun?’ she asks.

Callie thinks of the 10mm in her belt, of the punchier rifles Allen tried to train her to use. _Tried._

‘I’m all right,’ she replies. ‘But I’m a quick learner.’

Half-true. Haylen doesn’t need to know that.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A wild chapter appeared!

Although she expects to find Allen waiting outside her home when she gets back, he isn’t. She wastes little time in getting the door open, rushing into refuge from the rain. Times like this, she feels like every pair of boots she owns is waterlogged.

The first step is packing; she doesn’t even know where to begin.

She turns out the contents of her wardrobe onto her bed, tossing aside the less practical items and grabbing anything utilitarian. Haylen had warned her that they would be carrying everything they needed on their backs — her exact words were ‘If you can’t lift it, it stays behind’.

Acadia isn’t too far from the Harbor, but she doesn’t know how long they’ll be gone. Haylen gave her the impression that they could be away for a while. She’s not complaining. At least when she’s out in the wilds, she feels like she’s taking action.

In the end, jeans are the most practical items she has by way of pants, to which she adds a handful of t-shirts. She packs a pair of well-worn boots that have done right by her thus far, and she’s just shoving underwear and other odds and ends into the corners of her pack when a loud knock comes at the door.

She can’t help it — she flinches. She’s been so on edge lately that every loud noise is like a gunshot; she’s been grateful to Allen for sleeping over, even if they barely talk.

Allen. Must be him.

She sees him as she pads into the living room, through the window panes set in the door, his silhouette distorted slightly by the patterned glass. She can tell from the set of his shoulders that he’s not here to check in on her.

She barely has the door open when he pushes his way in.

‘What are you thinking?’ he demands. ‘I told you the Brotherhood of Steel were trouble.’

Maybe she should be flattered. It’s certainly the first real interest he’s shown in her — _her_ , not her ass -- even if it’s a little late to the game. 

She’s not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing what that does to her.

‘Wait,’ she says, putting her hands up. Her face contorts itself in mock surprise. ‘You mean I’m not a grown fucking woman, in charge of my own decisions? Well, _damn_ , looks like I had it all wrong.’

His face colors red at this — embarrassment, perhaps, although it’s more likely annoyance. She knows how headstrong he is, if only because she’s just as guilty of it. Maybe she’s a little guilty of wanting to push his buttons, too.

‘You can make your own decisions,’ he says, sharply. Defensive; like she struck a nerve. ‘I just figured with what we have, maybe my opinion might matter—’

She laughs then, and she can feel it start to bubble up within her. Not just _it_ : _It_ -with-a-capital-I. The It that took over when she made one too many bad calls when she was a kid; the It that pulls her strings like a marionette. The It that speaks now, in a voice that’s hers and not-hers.

‘Fuck off, Allen,’ It says. And: ‘You might’ve made yourself at home in my bed, but you are _not_ a part of my life.’

The words hang between them. She knows she could take them back, that it would be as simple as apologizing. They’ve said shitty things to each other in the past — this is no different. But then the moment passes, and she feels her chance slip away, and…

He looks at her, blank and cold. She had expected him to be angry but… this is so much worse.

‘You’re making a mistake,’ he says.

He waits, and when she blinks back at him and doesn’t respond, he shakes his head and brushes past her. He stops just at the door; looks back at her with that same damn emotionless stare.

‘Look after yourself, Cal.’

When he’s gone, she wonders what she had expected. She wonders what _It_ had expected — for him to coddle her, perhaps; to take her into his arms, to talk her down, to fight for her.

She was sorely fucking disappointed, if that was the case.

She chews on her bottom lip, and distantly she becomes aware of a sound behind her: quiet, familiar, insidious.

In spite of herself, she feels a grim, humorless smile pull at her lips. She never did get around to asking him to look at that leak.

* * *

Haylen comes to her early the next morning — early enough that if Callie had been able to sleep, she would have relished the opportunity to complain about it all the way out of town. As it is, she’s subdued: exhaustion and constantly being at the knife-edge of emotion have taken their toll.

Haylen is chipper, as Callie had expected her to be. It’s not the wakeup call she was hoping for.

‘To be honest, we were a little surprised you were so eager to go,’ Haylen says, her red braid swinging about the back of her neck as she walks. Callie tags a little behind, watching the hypnotic motion along the way. ‘I figured you might want a day or two to say your goodbyes.’

_Right. Those._

This isn’t her first time with the whole cut-and-run gig; if she doesn’t find Eve, she’s not coming back.

‘I guess it’s for the best, anyway,’ Haylen continues, oblivious. ‘Danse’s offer to help with the patrols didn’t exactly go down too well with your people.’

Callie resists the urge to scoff. _Her_ people. Now there’s a thought.

She’s not in a talkative mood, but Haylen seems more than happy to fill the silence with chatter, her breath sending plumes of steam into the early morning chill of the air.

It’s still dark enough that the buildings around them are fuzzy and indistinct, half-corporeal shadows looming over them in the early-morning gloom. They’re the only ones around in town, the anglers out on the piers notwithstanding.

She wonders if Allen is awake. Probably not, and what does it matter anyway?

She balls her free hand into a fist and grips a little tighter at the strap of her backpack with the other.

‘Been a while since we got fresh blood in our outfit,’ Haylen says. Companionable, as though they’re jaunting off on some adventure. To her, this is probably no different than any other morning. ‘Not that we expect you to join up, of course, but we _would_ appreciate the help, if you were willing.’

Haylen’s rambling. Probably been a while since she had the company of somebody who wasn’t either Danse or Rhys, neither of whom seem particularly chatty.

‘What exactly do you guys do?’ Callie asks. ‘I mean, do you just travel around the place looking for wolves to hunt?’

Haylen slows a little, matching Callie’s pace. When they’re side by side, she seems a little more thoughtful. Takes her time coming up with a response; it gives Callie a momentary reprieve from the inundation of chatter.

‘That’s part of it, I guess,’ she admits. ‘The Brotherhood is made up of a bunch of different chapters around the country. We sweep strategic locations and secure them — military fortifications, cities, stuff like that. It’s nearly impossible to completely eradicate an infestation, but with a Brotherhood foothold in a location, it’s a lot easier to keep things under control.’

_Infestation._

Callie plays the word over, Haylen’s casual tone repeating itself in her head. An _infestation_ makes it sound so simple: so clinical. Like there isn’t a person underneath the fur; someone who wears the skin of a human by day.

‘Never would’ve thought of the island as _strategic_ ,’ she says. That’s a safer train of thought; less room for confusion.

Haylen glances at her and Callie thinks a little smile plays across her lips.

‘You’d be surprised.’

The gate is closed when they reach it, as it has been every morning since Eve’s abduction. Callie knows it’s a gesture more than anything else — a symbol of the protection afforded by the walls. The harbor itself is surrounded by a more fortified barricade known colloquially as the Hull, but no wall can keep out any wolves that may have already made themselves at home in town.

Even so, the residents are precious about it — perhaps Avery more than most — and when the two women arrive at the foot of the outer gate they’re met with resistance.

‘I just came through earlier,’ Haylen protests. She emphasizes her words with a fist to the wooden expanse of the barrier, making the slats rattle in their frame.

Callie barely recognizes the guy on gate duty: some acne-riddled kid barely out of his school clothes, his rifle ridiculously oversized in his grasp. He carries himself with the petulant swagger of somebody who has yet to see any real danger. He looks down at them from atop the wall and flicks the end of his rifle in their direction.

‘Exactly,’ he replies. ‘You can’t just keep strolling in and out whenever you feel like it. You’re not even from here.’

Haylen sighs; Callie can feel her impatience from a few feet away.

‘You wanna go get Avery again?’ Haylen says. ‘She seemed real happy to be dragged out of bed earlier.’

The threat of it is enough; the kid is speechless for a moment before turning to the lever at his side. With a few cranks the gate creaks open.

‘You convinced him to go get Avery?’ Callie says, once they’re through. She spares a glance back at the kid; his expression is dark as he winds the gate shut once more.

‘I figured it was a risk,’ Haylen replies, with a shrug. ‘We haven’t exactly had the warmest of welcomes around town, but nobody said outright that we don’t have free passage.’

It must have rained in the night; the ground is churned up where the dirt is exposed in the patchwork of concrete, so Haylen leads her in a circuitous route back to the camp. Now that they’re outside of town she’s a little more reluctant to speak, and it seems to Callie that the fog has taken on a disquieting quality to it. She sticks close, eager not to lose her companion in the trees.

Noise doesn’t carry far in the fog; when Callie hears the low, rumbling voices of Haylen’s teammates she knows they’re close. Their words are inaudible, but she can pick out something else more clearly — clattering sounds, of things being moved around. When the camp comes into view, Callie finds it’s almost entirely dismantled.

‘You guys aren’t ready yet?’ Haylen says.

Callie catches the teasing tone to her voice, but apparently it’s lost on Rhys; his brow furrows irritably as he readies a retort, but Danse interrupts him with a murmured command that doesn’t quite reach their ears.

Their camp has been reduced to its base components now: tent poles, canopies and bedrolls. Callie wonders if it’s normal for them to live like this.

‘Why don’t you go over our itinerary with the civilian?’ Danse suggests.

He hardly glances up from his work. Elsewhere, the mammoth metal form of his armor sits unused, the eyes of the helmet giving the illusion of sentience.

Haylen clears her throat.

Callie flashes an apologetic smile; she’s distractible, and that’s probably cardinal-sin-number-one in their organization. Even if she’s only going to be with them for a few days, she’s not so sure now how she’s going to handle running on military time: oh-six-thirty this, oh-five-hundred that. She certainly hopes they don’t regularly rise to see five in the morning.

Haylen has a map in her hands, laminated to ward off the fat rain drops that trickle down from the tree canopy overhead.

‘There’s a pretty direct route there by road,’ she says. She traces it out, dislodging a raindrop with her fingertip. ‘Then there’s a trail up the hillside, but we’d be out in the open.’

‘Can you figure out where the guard patrols are?’ Callie suggests. ‘Pick them off?’

Haylen’s lips narrow into a grim line. She shakes her head.

‘We haven’t been able to get a reliable figure for how many there are. We start taking potshots, we might just piss them off.’

It’s not exactly what Callie wanted to hear — she had pictured them bursting in with guns a-blazing. She keeps quiet.

‘We have enough tranq darts to take out a few of them if it comes to that,’ Haylen continues. ‘Beyond that, there’s good old-fashioned lethal force, but we’d like to avoid that if we can help it.’

‘So what’s the plan, then?’

When she sees Haylen’s face — the little head-tilt, the quirk of her lips at the corner — she knows she’s not going to like the answer.

Callie folds her arms over herself and nods her head for the other woman to continue.

‘We know _we_ can’t get close,’ Haylen says, with a glance over her shoulder at the two men at work. ‘But near as we can tell, they seem to leave civilians alone unless they’re armed. So…’

Callie winces. She knows what’s coming — knows she can turn away right now and avoid that outcome — and yet she goes ahead and opens her mouth like she can’t quite seem to stop herself.

‘So?’

‘So,’ Haylen echoes, and she has a meek little smile like she’s trying to be enticing. Callie wonders how often that works. ‘We figured that was where you’d come in.’


	9. Chapter 9

She doesn’t know how they roped her into this.

Maybe it’s a death wish — Callie knows she has a tendency to be reckless, even without everybody around her routinely reminding her off the fact. Maybe she’s just naive.

Whatever it was, once Haylen had reassured her repeatedly that they would be watching her every step of the way, she had somehow found herself agreeing to it.

She has a knife strapped around her boot, but the gun stayed with the others. She doesn’t much like her chances if their little plan doesn’t work.

The path takes a steep uphill trek and a little way into it, her thighs are burning from the exertion. After a particularly unforgiving stretch she starts to wish she had known it would be such a hike; she would have said no on that basis alone.

To distract herself from the discomfort, she focuses on the scenery around her. Maybe in another life she might’ve enjoyed the view — might’ve brought Eve up here with a picnic basket and a blanket for them to lay out in the grass.

She wonders sometimes what the world was like, before everything: what it was like to wake up each morning without having to steel yourself for the news of whoever had been killed or turned.

The trees sway over her in the breeze, and through the patchwork of leaves the sunlight filters down, warming her. The place is so still — so peaceful.

She realizes then that she hasn’t heard the sounds of animals here — the thrum of insects, the rustling of little creatures in the grass. What had been a soothing stillness seems ominous now, and she can’t help but walk a little faster, shooting a glance down at the knife in her boot as she goes.

It isn’t long before the stillness seems to shift, and she thinks she can hear something beyond the whisper of the leaves above her; the hairs prickle at the back of her neck and she braces herself for an attack that never comes.

At the top of the mountain, the path winds around to a large building, its domed roof looming above. Callie still has stairs ahead of her before she reaches the observatory, but before she can get there a woman in a long black leather coat stands in her path. 

‘I hope your friends know that if they make one wrong move, you’re dead,’ the woman says. Judging by her tone — and by the gun at her hip — she means business.

Callie tries not to glance back in the direction of the others; she wouldn’t be able to see them from here, at any rate. It seems they’ve already been spotted.

‘They’re just here to watch my back,’ she replies. Calm and non-confrontational. ‘We don’t mean you any harm.’

The woman doesn’t seem convinced, if the quirk of her eyebrow is anything to go by. She sets her hands on her hips and takes a step closer, glancing Callie over.

‘I haven’t seen you before,’ she says, ‘so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. But your friends killed two of ours the last time they were up here.’

Callie thinks of the first time she saw the Brotherhood, when they had blasted into The Last Plank covered in blood and dirt. It had seemed at the time as though they had come out the worse for their encounter; it makes sense that they would have done some damage of their own.

‘They were attacked,’ she says. ‘They had to defend themselves.’

The woman laughs so sharply that the sound startles Callie and she flinches, unable to stop herself. 

‘ _Defend_ themselves?’ the woman says, full of scorn. ‘They came to _our_ territory, armed to the teeth.’

‘That’s enough, Chase.’

Callie and the woman turned toward the source of the new voice. A man approaches from the steps leading to the observatory, his gait unhurried. 

The woman — Chase — seems to defer to this man in some way. She steps back when he nears, but doesn’t leave altogether. Lingers instead: protective.

He’s in front of Callie now, and this close she can see he’s older than she had first thought, showing in the lines around his eyes and mouth. His hair is neatly side-parted, the dark strands peppered with gray.

‘It’s not often a human willingly seeks out a wolf’s den,’ he says. ‘Armed only with a knife, no less.’

His voice is soft, tranquil even: Callie finds herself hanging on every word.

‘I’ll tell my people to bring your friends up here, if that makes you feel safer.’

It’s a kind offer — meant to build bridges. She nods.

‘Very well,’ he says.

He turns to Chase and speaks quietly to her, and when he’s finished she flicks a glance at Callie before departing.

‘You’ll have to forgive Chase,’ he says warmly. With a hand, he gestures towards the observatory behind him. ‘She’s very protective of our little refuge.’

‘We’re just here to talk,’ Callie says.

The man tips his head.

The others are there a moment later, Chase leading the way. Behind them is a small group carrying the Brotherhood’s guns. 

The man looks at the others for a long while, his brow furrowing in concentration. Callie blinks, and when her eyes are open again he’s looking at her.

‘I’m sorry to do things like this,’ the man says. ‘It’s a matter of ensuring your safety as much as ours.’

He turns towards the steps behind him, then pauses and looks back.

‘You’re more than welcome to come inside,’ he says, his eyes fixed on Callie. ‘But I’m afraid your companions will have to remain here.’

Callie hears an exclamation from someone who can only be Rhys: ‘That’s bullshit!’

‘I’m afraid that’s not possible,’ Danse says, his tone decidedly more level than Rhys’s.

Irritation prickles at Callie. She’s the whole reason they made it this far — if she hadn’t agreed to their plan, they wouldn’t be here.

‘That’s fine,’ she says.

She hazards a glance back at Danse; unsurprisingly, he doesn’t look pleased. She holds his gaze as long as she can, cool and unmoving, and he seems to crumple slightly. The stern set of his features is replaced by a look of resignation.

As the man leads her up the stairs to the observatory, she wonders if she should have pushed and had the Brotherhood accompany her. It’s starting to sink in now that she’ll be alone here, completely at the mercy of this stranger, this soft-spoken man whom she knows nothing about.

She tries to tell herself that if these people were really a threat to her, they would have hurt her already. The thought isn’t particularly reassuring.

The interior of the observatory is what you would expect from a relic of the old world — dusty, dim corridors, peeling paint and ancient signs on the walls that mean nothing to anyone alive to see them. Yet here and there are signs of inhabitation: a jacket discarded in a heap on a stack of boxes, the ring of laughter coming from another floor.

Callie can’t help but wonder if she’ll be a prisoner here, in these cold concrete hallways that the wolves call home. 

The man takes her to a circular chamber at the end of the initial corridor; the room is filled with old computers and readouts that probably haven’t worked in generations, but the telescope is the most noticeable piece of equipment, taking up most of the space as it does.

‘Welcome to Acadia,’ the man says, gesturing broadly with his hands as he enters the space.

As Callie looks about, she realizes that not all of the technology in the room is defunct — some of the screens still glow blue, filled with row upon row of seemingly random text.

‘My name is Dima,’ the man says. ‘I take it you're Callie. We've been expecting you.’

In the silence that follows, a pin could have been heard dropping; as it is, the hum of overworked computers becomes impossibly loud. 

Callie stares ahead blankly. 

‘You… were expecting me?’

A nod of Dima’s head, a little smile.

‘We have eyes and ears outside Acadia,’ he replies elusively. ‘I heard about what happened to your daughter.’

Callie’s stomach lurches — she came here in hopes that someone would be able to help her find Eve, yet it seems they’ve got their information through another source. She wonders, fleetingly, who has been reporting to them from the Harbor.

‘Has somebody been spying on us?’

The muscles in Dima’s face ripple just slightly; there’s a furrow in his brow now that she hadn’t noticed before, etched into his skin by the years.

‘More like keeping an eye,’ he says. ‘Your people have steered clear of here, and that suited us well — but we had to be sure. It was thanks to our contact in your town that we knew the Brotherhood had arrived on the Island. We protect ourselves, above all.’

Callie turns away, to the closest of the powered-up displays. Even right in front of it, she can’t make sense of the scrambled text. It must be important, however, for them to dedicate the precious resource of electricity to the process.

‘When you’re not snatching children from their beds, you mean,’ she says tonelessly.

She runs her finger across the screen in front of her, dislodging a thin film of dust. As if on reflex, Dima steps towards her but she moves away, wiping the dust from her fingertip as she goes.

‘We had nothing to do with that,’ he replies, watching her levelly. ‘And I think you know that, or you wouldn’t have agreed to speak with me in private like this.’

They stay like that, barely feet apart, and Callie thinks of the others outside — to the resolution they expect, and the answers she came here looking for. Maybe a part of her had imagined this place would be full of savage beasts wasting no time talking with humans; maybe she’s a little surprised by what she found instead.

‘You’re right.’

He nods in acknowledgement, and soon his hand is on the back of her shoulder as he begins to steer her out of the room, toward a door she hadn’t previously noticed. Within, the place is illuminated in blue by countless screens; the heat given off by the machines is almost overwhelming.

A man leans over a terminal, typing in sporadic bursts before stepping away from time to time to check the displays behind him.

‘Faraday.’

The man looks up, startled. His eyes land on Dima; it takes him a little too long to notice Callie’s presence.

He looks like his hasn’t slept much over the past few days — if at all. His dark hair is scooped back over his head as though he keeps running a hand through it, a reflex which he indulges as he looks Callie over. His facial hair is a little shaggy, a product of neglect.

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Hello.’

Dima chuckles softly to himself. A moment later he’s at Faraday’s side, a hand placed companionably on his shoulder.

‘This is Callie,’ he says. ‘The woman I told you about.’

Faraday’s glance appraises her for a second time and she feels the urge to cross her arms over herself, to hide away. She knows next to nothing about these people, and yet they’ve been awaiting her arrival.

‘I remember,’ Faraday says.

He extends a hand; when Callie shakes it, his palm is clammy.

‘I thought you might like to talk Callie through what you’re doing here,’ Dima says.

The look on Faraday’s face says he probably has a billion better things to do — all of them revolving around the glare of the screens behind him. With a pointed look from Dima, he sighs and turns back to his terminal, typing something in before glancing back over his shoulder at her.

‘How much do you know about genetics?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kept Dima's name intact because it exists already as a diminutive form of Dimitri. Obviously the capitalisation had to go...


	10. Chapter 10

Callie looks at Faraday blankly. 

‘Genetics?’

She doesn't want to say that she knows as much about the topic as she does about old world politics, or astrophysics, but she can't think of a better way to convey it. 

Her vague expression seems enough for him, however, and she wonders if he was even looking for an answer to begin with. She watches him turn his back to her and type a few strings in, finally tapping one last key with a flourish.

It takes a moment to render, but the text on the screen is soon replaced by a rudimentary image, green on black, of some sort of winding shape. When she looks a little closer she can see it's made up of two strands side by side, linked by little bars. 

‘DNA,’ Faraday says. ‘The building blocks for life. All living things have it — humans. Wolves. Plants. Even some viruses.’

Callie fails to see his point; she shifts her weight onto one hip and folds her arms across herself. 

‘We didn't learn much about science when I was a kid,’ she says. ‘You might have better luck with Haylen.’

Faraday scowls ever so slightly, but Dima’s hand is on his arm a moment later. 

‘Maybe just the abridged version for now,’ Dima says, in that soft voice of his.

Faraday clears his throat. 

‘Fine.’

Another flurry of quick typing, and the screen displays a second image of DNA alongside the first. 

‘There was a time, not long after the outbreak, when people thought that it was a curse,’ he says, and his nose wrinkles. ‘Some sort of plague, sent to punish the wicked at the end of days. It was believed that looking into the eyes of a wolf was enough to be infected.’

That much, at least, Callie knows is untrue; she might not have been taught a lot by way of science growing up, but she knows the fundamental rules to staying alive.

‘You need to be bitten for it to spread,’ she says. 

Faraday nods. 

‘In most cases. In others, merely coming into contact with the bodily fluids of somebody infected is enough.’

Callie still doesn't see where he's going with this. She shoots an impatient glance at Dima, who merely shakes his head and gestures for Faraday to continue. 

‘The infection is transmitted by a virus,’ Faraday says. ‘A few separate strains, in fact. A number of scientists, both government-funded and independent, have attempted to come up with some sort of cure. Unfortunately the virus is constantly mutating so it's been fruitless, until recently.’

Callie catches the inflection there — the bait for her to push him for more. She wonders how many times he has given this little speech.

‘ _Until recently?_ ’

He nods, a little eagerly, and to the side Callie can see an exasperated look pass over Dima’s face.

‘That's what we're working on here,’ Faraday sees, with a tip of his head towards the bank of computers. ‘Each one of these screens represents a different process in a larger program. We keep the terminals running day and night, and it seems we're getting closer to a solution.’

Callie takes a second to let it all sink in. Most of what he has said is meaningless to her — the closest she has ever come to using a terminal was playing with a broken one as a child.

Talk of a solution isn't lost on her, at least. 

‘You've found a cure?’

He inclines his head: not quite a nod.

‘I assume you’ve seen the newly infected,’ he says. ‘It manifests at first as flu-like symptoms: fever, aches and chills. Some appear to return to normal, the infection quietly overtaking their body and leaving nobody the wiser. Others turn feral, losing their sense of humanity entirely.’

A cold feeling washes over Callie. 

_She's in her hometown, hiding under her bed in the dead of night. She can hear savage growling, can see bristling fur close enough to touch, and she clamps a hand over her mouth to try to keep the scream from tearing free of her throat—_

‘Callie?’

It's Dima; he looks at her with concern written into his features. He has his hand on her forearm. 

She shakes it away. 

‘I know what happens when people turn,’ she says sharply. ‘If there's a point to all this, can you get to it?’

For the first time, she sees something close to compassion in Faraday’s expression. When he continues once more, he's subdued. 

‘The point is that not everybody goes feral like that,’ he says. ‘The question is _why_. Look at us — we've managed to live here peacefully, finding more and more like-minded wolves to join our refuge.

‘We think we've managed to isolate whatever it is that lets some of the infected hold onto their humanity. With time, we think it could be used to prevent anyone from going feral.’

She feels sick, trapped in this room with the hum of so many computers running at once. She wishes she had never come.

‘So you don't want to cure it,’ she says. Her voice comes out flat and strained, not entirely sounding like her own. ‘You just want to change it.’

Confusion registers on Faraday’s face, and he opens his mouth to reply until Dima puts out a hand to stop him. 

‘Perhaps this is a little too much to take in all at once,’ Dima says.

He lifts a hand to gesture toward the door, ushering Callie out. She doesn't need to be asked twice; barely waiting for the others, she crosses the room and steps out, leaning back against the wall just to the side of the door. 

A figure steps out after her. She's relieved to see that it's Dima on his own.

He closes the door behind him and stands a little way from her, giving her some space. 

‘Why did you show me that?’ she asks. To her own ears she sounds impossibly weary. 

Dima sighs. 

‘A number of reasons. To show you that not all wolves are mindless killers. To show you what we're working towards.’

She looks soberly at him; tall as he is, she has to lift her chin to meet his eye. 

‘And how will that get my daughter back?’

She sees him press his lips together, his handsome face turning stern. He seems fatherly now, and she realizes that's the quality she couldn't quite place about him — the thing that made her so quick to listen to him, to trust him even though she has no reason to. 

‘I didn't want to tell you this in front of your companions,’ he says. ‘Many here at Acadia have had run-ins with the Brotherhood before. They're deeply devoted people on a righteous crusade, and while they believe their way is the right one, they don't often give their enemies a chance to explain themselves.’

Callie understands now what he's getting at: he didn't know if he could trust the others. Which means, in some roundabout way, that he trusts _her_. 

She tips her head, a cue to continue. 

‘There are other refuges like this,’ he says. ‘Some of them we have found by chance, others by actively seeking out allies. Ours isn't the only group looking for ways to deal with the infection.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ she asks, finally perking up. ‘Are you saying one of these other refuges might have my daughter?’

Dima shakes his head, and as he looks away and turns the profile of his face to her — his prominent nose, his strong jaw — she notices the old scars for the first time, stretching from his jaw and down his neck. 

‘I can't think of anyone in those refuges who would take a child from her own bed,’ he says darkly, his face turning bitter as he looks to her once more. ‘But apparently she's not the first to go missing. There are reports from many places. Children _and_ adults.’

She doesn't know if the news is supposed to reassure her, but it doesn't. She came here for answers, not the knowledge that this has been going on since before Eve. 

She wants to leave — to put this unnerving place and everyone in it behind her. She knows that she can't do that if she wants to find Eve, yet everyone keeps talking to her in double speak. 

‘Why do I get the feeling you’re about to ask me to do something for you?’

‘I do want to help you, Callie,’ Dima says. ‘More than that, I want everyone on this island to coexist in peace. The Brotherhood’s presence here… disrupts matters somewhat.’

So that’s his angle: he wants the Brotherhood gone. She only wishes she had that kind of sway with them.

‘You know I’m not exactly in a position to give them orders, right?’

Callie thinks she catches a flicker of a smile from him.

‘Maybe not,’ he says, ‘but you might be able to convince them there’s a bigger threat out there. Some of our allies have leads that may be of interest to the Brotherhood.’

* * *

Callie leaves the observatory with a promise: she and the others won’t be harmed, as long as they don’t threaten Acadia.

Dima gives her until sundown to discuss his terms with the Brotherhood. If they linger after that, Callie knows the promise of a truce won’t hold.

When she finds the group once more, Dima’s guards have already let the others go. She wonders how his word reached them before her.

‘Come looking for me when you’ve made your decision,’ Chase says to Callie, as her companions disperse. ‘If you haven’t returned by sundown, we’ll know your answer.’

Callie watches, nonplussed, as the woman retreats. She had been a little less cold this time than their initial meeting: still distrustful, but not outright hostile.

‘Status report,’ Danse says, blunt and professional. His ego seems somewhat bruised to have been at the wolves’ mercy, even though they’ve been given their weapons once more.

Callie shakes her head.

‘Not here,’ she replies. ‘Let’s talk someplace else.’

He raises an eyebrow in curiosity and she wonders what’s running through his mind: whether he assumes that she’s worried about being overhead. Rather, this place — and the inhabitants within it — unnerves her. She feels like the wolves have been paying close scrutiny to her in particular.

Danse leads them back down the hill, far enough that Callie can no longer feel the observatory looming over them. When she turns back the dome of it is hidden behind the lush canopy of trees; she can breathe a little easier.

‘Well?’ Danse says.

He’s not the only one looking to her for answers.

‘Dima has intel that might interest you,’ she says. Reflexively, she wraps her arms about herself to stave off the chill in the air. ‘But there’s a price. I don’t think you’re going to like it.’


End file.
